Relentless

pee.
    Thereafter, Penny drove us off the shingle, to the dirt road, and back toward Highway 101.
    “How did the gun thing go?” Milo asked.
    “Your mother’s still alive,” I said.
    “What about your feet?”
    “I didn’t shoot either of them.”
    “Triumph.”
    My disposable cell phone rang, and it was Vivian Norby She had gotten a disposable of her own, and she gave me the number.
    “How’s it going?” Vivian asked.
    “We haven’t driven your Mountaineer off a cliff.”
    “You mean you’ve made Penny do all that driving herself?”
    “I’m not going to let you sit Milo anymore. Obviously, he’s a bad influence.”
    “Listen,” Vivian said, “I’ve been on the Net doing research, and I’ve got some interesting news. I don’t think Thomas Landulf was Waxx’s only victim in Smokeville. There’s maybe another one, his name is Henry Casas, and he’s sort of alive.”

   Smokeville was so picturesque that you kept looking for the gnomes and elfenfolk who constructed it.
    The buildings on the main street and most of the houses were Victorian, with enough gingerbread to make any Modern Movement architect grind his teeth to dust.
    This settlement of four thousand lay on lowlands just above the sea. Its western neighborhoods sloped down through cedars and hemlocks to the shore.
    In the sea were magnificent rock towers, weathered into fanciful shapes, from which the wind, when at sufficient force, raised the voices of mournful oboes, of soft uilleann pipes and penny whistles yearning for Ireland.
    Warburton Motor Court was a collection of quaint little cottages from the 1930s, shaded by the robes of immense deodar cedars like giant monks gathered for worship.
    Cash in advance and the license-plate number of the Mountaineerbought us enough trust from the desk clerk that I was not asked to provide a credit card or a driver’s license. I signed the register as Kenton Ewen, borrowing two of my lost uncles’ first names.
    Milo abandoned one trunk when we fled the peninsula house, but he had the bread-box thing he saved from that debacle, the items that Grimbald obtained, and a second trunk of oddities, curiosities, and incomprehensibles. He was eager to set up shop in the cramped living room of the cottage.
    According to the address Vivian Norby obtained, Henry Casas lived within easy walking distance of Warburton Motor Court. Given his circumstances, we felt that I would have the best chance of seeing him if I went alone.
    Penny and I were loath to split up, but we were now armed and less vulnerable than before. She remained with Milo and Lassie in the motor-court cottage.
    Henry Casas’s house was a splendid Victorian with a deep front porch and an Italianate double door with a stained-glass fanlight.
    Two and a half years ago, Henry’s mother moved to Smokeville from Atlanta, to run his house and to oversee his care.
    The woman who answered the doorbell appeared to be in her mid-fifties. Her flawless skin, doe eyes, and petite frame suggested a delicate flower, but her hands were strong and marked by work, and there was about her an air of one who never shrank from a challenge.
    “Good afternoon.” She had a southern accent.
    “Are you Mrs. Casas?”
    “Henry’s mother, yes.”
    “Mrs. Casas, my name is—”
    “I know who you are, Mr. Greenwich. I can’t for the life of me imagine why you’re here, but it’s a pleasure to welcome you.”
    She stepped back from the threshold and ushered me inside.
    Although she assumed that I hoped to see her son, she took me first to the library, which had many books and no DVDs.
    The most striking things in the room were two paintings by Henry. His talent was immense.
    A narrative artist of real genius, his technique was meticulous. One work was egg tempera on a gesso foundation, the other a dry-brush watercolor. His sense of light, the clarity of his execution riveted the eye. Clearly, he was influenced by Andrew Wyeth, but his subjects were his own, as was the complexity of his intent.
    Turning from the second painting, I went directly to the heart of the matter: “Mrs. Casas, was your son a friend of Thomas Landulf?”
    She met my eyes no less directly than did Penny, and I saw that she had already decided to trust me. “Yes. They were good friends.”
    “Does Henry believe that Tom Landulf killed his wife and child, then set himself afire?”
    “No, Mr. Greenwich, he does not.”
    “Please call me Cubby.”
    “Thank you, Cubby. I’m